Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo or Linux from Scratch - Perspectives?

[Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl>]

Paul Hoy schreef:
> 
> On Aug 14, 2005, at 5:24 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 15:42:19 -0400, Paul Hoy wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I really like Gentoo and I like that fact that it does a pretty good  
>>> job at supporting Gnome, however, it's still behind other releases,  
>>> such as Fedora, in terms of when it releases updates, etc.
>>>
>>
>> Gentoo has rolling updates, so it is always up to date. If you want to
>> run the latest of everything you will need to run a ~arch system. There
>> are no releases for Gentoo beyond the installation live CDs. Once
>> installed, provided you keep up to date, there is no difference between a
>> system installed three years ago and one installed yesterday.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Neil Bothwick
>>
>> Windows Error #09: Game Over. Exiting Windows.
>>
> 
> Hi Neil,
> 
> ~arch is a little scary for me, since it's not in the stable branch.  
> 
> Paul

Well, that's understandable, if that's the way you are, but "you"
(generic) can't have it both ways.

If you want the latest upstream release of whatever, it's not
necessarily going to be stable... all newly-released software is subject
to bugs that only come out with use of the kind that only freaky ol'
users can conceive.

No distribution marks anything stable until it's old enough to have been
worked to death to get the bugs out. Which is fine.

Nobody's making anybody use ~, and if you (generic) value stability,
you're already used to waiting. It's true that there is a backlog of
submitted ebuilds on b.g.o... some of them are perfectly stable (but
just aren't in actual Portage yet), some need some help before they'll
work properly (because the ebuild writer made some mistakes along the
way). I've been following the taskjuggler b.g.o ebuild for a couple of
months, and that just made it into Portage yesterday. But I've had
taskjuggler for a couple of months (had to hack the ebuild to get it to
compile). I'm looking forward to upgrading to the new ebuild to see if
all of the kinks have been ironed out.

Almost all Linux software is a constantly-evolving WIP, and conforming a
WIP to a distribution which itself is a WIP is a big job. The only way
it can "succeed" in terms of being considered temporarily stable is to
freeze things at some point.

RedHat (Fedora) and other binary distros do this themselves (you won't
get thus-and-so version of X application until they've worked out the
kinks between the app and the distro). Gentoo relies on you to do this
for yourself. Mask all of unstable if that's how you want it (and wait
for it to propagate down). Or unmask specific programs that you're
willing to deal with some possible instability in order to 'keep up with
the Joneses'. Or just live wild and run completely unstable (which
usually works, but can go horribly, horribly wrong on occasion-- I still
haven't gotten over the PAM debacle that ate my previous Gentoo install).

It's up to you. It always is, with Gentoo... which is why I love it.

But I don't so much see what there is to debate about-- your system is
*yours*; run it the way you want.

Holly
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